Grim: upx is great as far as memory on a toram booted dsl, but doesn't reduce the size of the dsl iso much (if any) because the iso KNOPPIX is already compressed. So what you gained by the create_compressed_fs is lost by trying to compress an already compressed file.

I think betaftp should stay in the distro. Athough I agree with Grim that a user could create a website and allow downloads from that using monkey, I believe ftp is easier for a newer user to impliment and get running. It also provides password security and can be accessed from internet explorer.

... All non-essential (I even think of firefox as redundant since there is dillo but I know many disagree) ......

Yes I disagree w/ you regarding Dillo / Firefox redundancy. Actually you cannot keep Dillo only because, as far as I read, it does not accept https, so forget the access to your bank account, to Yahoo mail, ...

Maybe FF is big, but is there s.t. in between Dillo and FF, w/ a light window manager??? I don't know

Flash now works fine when I boot with the parameter "noapic". I also need that parameter for dsl to recognize my usb devices. This kernel seems to mount my external usb drive very slowly and transferring files between that and my internal hard drive is painfully slower than it is in the 2.1 release. Is there some other boot parameter I should use for that?